The Ones Pulling the Trigger
by free4life
Summary: Oneshot based off of the writing prompt: "It's funny how sometimes the people you'd take a bullet for, are the people behind the trigger." AU where Nagisa ends up choosing the life of an assassin rather than pursuing the career of a teacher. [I do not own the cover image]


**A/N**

 **Hey guys! So my friend was sending over a bunch of writing prompts, and I decided to use one of them.**

 **Writing prompt: "It's funny how sometimes the people you'd take a bullet for, are the ones behind the trigger."**

 **This is a sort-of AU in which Nagisa doesn't end up working as a teacher, but instead pursues the career of an assassin.**

 **Disclaimer: I do not own Assassination Classroom or any of its characters... as much as I'd like to...**

 **Enjoy~**

* * *

"It's funny how sometimes the people you'd take a bullet for, are the ones behind the trigger."

Those were the exact words that ran through Nagisa's head as he stared into the tip of the gun point straight at him. He could also feel the steely coldness of a blade pressing against his neck, and Nagisa sighed as he stared straight at his assaulter, eyes filled with many unnamable emotions. He should have been more careful; he knew that if he let down his guard, something was bound to happen to him. After all, as a skilled assassin, he was a wanted man by many - whether dead or alive. He was always on guard - so what had happened now?

He had known that there had been someone who was after him - that 'someone' had been after Nagisa for a while, in fact. Nagisa had always kept careful watch against everyone - he didn't trust anyone who was outside of his inner circle of acquaintances, and wouldn't hesitate to kill whoever seemed to be a threat to his life.

But while he had been on the run, he ran into Karma - an old friend of his from school, with whom he had lost contact with for the past several years. After hearing Nagisa's story, Karma had decided that he wanted to stay with Nagisa - he said something about being a wanted man by the authorities, too. Nagisa trusted Karma enough to let him join. So the two had taken flight together, always running from their pursuers. There were many who wished him death, but there was one the had to watch out especially for. People called him (or her?) many names, among which included the Bringer of Justice, the Avenger, and the Reaper's Enemy. Nagisa was well-known as the Reaper; no one knew that he was, in fact, the third Reaper. The two of them had come closer to the face of death than they liked many times, but they always managed to escape together - even if it was by the tiniest hairbreadth that they did so.

Nagisa still took on jobs, but only carried them out alone - always refusing Karma's help. He didn't like his friends seeing him when he committed the murder. He wasn't ashamed - not at all. Nagisa had gotten used to the sight of blood; not that blood had ever made him feel queasy before. It was a natural sight. It was quite the opposite; he didn't like people witnessing his murders because it was something private to him - to Nagisa, this was his unique form of art. He was the sort of artist who didn't display his handiworks to the world until it was complete, and never before.

Killing was the most beautiful form of art to Nagisa. At first, when he had taken the career of an assassin, he had felt slight unease every time he finished a kill. But as time progressed it soon became easy for him, and he could kill without any feelings but satisfaction at his handiwork. There was beauty in the way the blood poured out of the wound, and splattered against the ground or another surface. The blood created its own unique paintings.

In this way, Nagisa and Karma had been together for the past three and a bit weeks. Earlier that night, though, they had stopped by the edge of a small town bordering a big city and made camp in an old, abandoned little shack. Nagisa set out their makeshift beds, while Karma went out to get some dinner. He had come back with two cups of water which Karma said came from a spring running alongside the town, and a couple slices of bread. Nagisa hadn't even bothered asking where the cups and bread had come from; in this way, Karma was useful. Karma's thievery skills were second to none, and had helped the two many times.

After their quick dinner, Karma settled down for first watch while Nagisa crawled into the bed. Within seconds, he was asleep.

It couldn't have been an hour later when Nagisa awoke with a start, and tried to sit upright, but his muscles refused to listen to him. _Weird._ There had been a loud crash, and looking around, Nagisa realized that the door had been knocked down, but that wasn't what seemed to have caused the crash... A table was on its side by one of the walls. That must have been what had caused the crash. One hooded figure stood in the doorway, and it was fleeting, but Nagisa still thought, in his momentary stupor, _Seriously, a hood? How cliché can you get?_

Nagisa knew something was wrong - he tried to get up quickly, but could only move his muscles at an achingly slow pace. Nagisa grew increasingly nervous as the figure slowly approached them. Close combat had never been his forte, and to make it worse, his muscles had seemed to turn to jelly. The figure had a gun held up, but it didn't take long for Nagisa to realize that it wasn't pointed at him; it was pointed at Karma, who was slightly to his left. Looking over at the redhead, Nagisa's eyes widened as he took in Karma's appearance. It seemed that there had been a scuffle before this - Karma's face was beginning to bruise, and there were cuts along his arms. But the thing that struck Nagisa the most about Karma's appearance right then was his facial expression.

Never, in the years he had known Karma, had he ever seen such an expression upon Karma's face. His eyes were widened, with a look that bordered terror, and his face was unnaturally paled. His eyebrows were raised up, whether in surprise or something else, Nagisa couldn't tell; and his mouth was open in what was undeniably shock. Karma had never shown such a vulnerable expression before, and this was what made Nagisa crack.

Upon impulse, Nagisa dashed in front of Karma despite the pain shooting through his legs as his muscles protested. He stood between the attacker and his best friend, bracing himself for the inevitable incoming of the bullet.

But after a couple seconds, there was still no sound of a gunshot, still no searing pain in his body. But there was another feeling. There was the unmistakable feel the cold, hard blade of a sharp knife pressing against his neck. It took only a second for Nagisa to realize what was happening, but in that one second Karma had acted, and Nagisa was staring at the barrel of a gun.

Sighing, Nagisa lowered his head in defeat, and put his hands up slowly as he sank down to the ground. The knife and gun moved with his every movement, though Karma remained standing. He heard Karma speak - not to him, but to the hooded figure.

"Thanks Okuda. I-I'll take it from here. Make sure the rest of the class doesn't interfere; Nagisa is mine to take." Nagisa's eyes widened a little when he heard the break in his friend's - no, his mind corrected him, _betrayer's_ \- voice. The figure nodded once, and left. But Nagisa had caught sight of Okuda's face before she had left. His former classmate had tears streaming down her face, and an expression of what was undoubtedly remorse. And if he wasn't mistaken, Karma had said _class_. Did that mean there were others?

The hands holding the weapons remained firm, in a resolute grip. Karma was determined to end it here.

"Hey Karma? I won't hold this against you. But wouldn't it do you more good if you were just to turn me into the authorities? I know for a fact that they would pay you better if I was handed in alive." Nagisa tried to hold onto a slight joking tone, but failed.

"Tch. Nagisa, are you trying to make this harder for me? Besides, I can't turn you in. One reason being that I know what they would do to you if I handed you over to them, and they won't let me take part in it. Don't you think for a moment I'm going to kill you here because I know that what they'll do to you is worse than murder. It's only because they won't let me take part in the torture." Karma said, and Nagisa knew without turning that Karma was smiling his trademark smirk. Yet Nagisa could still detect a slight tremor in his voice.

"But... why? Why would you and the rest of the class do this? After all... weren't we all assassins? Why would you turn against one of your own?" His voice held no desperation at all; Nagisa was earnestly and truly curious. But instead of Karma speaking up, a blond-haired girl stepped in through the doorway and spoke.

"Sure, we may have agreed to become assassins for that year. But we didn't agree to a whole life of being assassins." Nagisa immediately recognized the girl to be another former classmate; Nakamura. "By assassinating Korosensei, we were doing what we thought would save the world. It wasn't because we _wanted_ to. But I've changed after Korosensei's death. Seeing you kill him - all of us cried, didn't we? The bonds that held us together weren't just teacher and student; it was assassin and target." At this point, Nakamura smiled sadly at Nagisa, and moved in to stand against a wall, watching Karma hold Nagisa with his weapons.

"That's why we could bear it that year; we could continue on with our unusual relationship with our teacher _and_ target. He wasn't only a target; he was also a teacher. We all realized that we just weren't cut out for this. Sure, that year was fun. But to actually _kill_ someone out of cold blood - that wasn't something I could do. To kill someone, just because they were a target; that just wasn't something we could do." This time is was Kayano speaking.

"But you were different. Sure, you cried too. We all saw it. But I think the difference was that you cried because you knew that was the real you, wasn't it? You cried because you knew at that moment that you enjoyed it. And you cried because you had killed someone who you had emotional attachments to." Their class rep, Isogai, was the one who said this.

Nagisa slowly nodded, not denying any of this as more and more of his former classmates revealed themselves.

"At that time, we all thought you were crying for the same reasons as us - our teacher was gone. Dead. The one who we spent the year with, the one who motivated and inspired us E-class students to strive through all the difficulties, was truly gone. We thought it was because of that you were crying. Only later on did I realize that wasn't your only reason. You disappeared after our graduation - no one could get a hold of you for a couple months." It was Kurahashi this time.

"So imagine our surprise when one day, as we continued on with our daily lives, we heard of the assassin of the nobleman in France. They said it was the work of a professional, and that some people said they saw someone with blue hair slip out of the garden the same night the nobleman was assassinated." Maehara joined in.

"Blue hair, assassination... those who were still in contact with each other from Class E immediately started discussing the possibility that this new assassin was you. Everyone already knew though, deep down. We all knew it was you. This shocked us; we hadn't expected you to actually continue on with the career of an assassin. But at the same time, I think we all expected this. But none of us thought this was right." Sweet Kanzaki spoke up hesitantly.

"Honestly? One of the reason we may be doing this is because... We're afraid of you, Nagisa," Itona said. "You can kill anyone out of cold blood, just because you were hired to do it. That scares us - you can kill _anyone_. Even Karasuma felt the serpent within you - and was scared."

"Yeah, what if you turn against us?" Terasaka put in bluntly, earning glares from several girls. "What? That's all what we're thinking about, worrying over, deep down. Isn't it? Don't tell me you all want to do this just because of justice and that load of crap. Let's be frank; we're all terrified that Nagisa would kill us. Who knows what could happen?"

Chiba and Hayami entered the room too, but said nothing; merely holding their guns and pointing it at Nagisa.

Karma started talking again. "Chiba, Hayami. Please don't shoot Nagisa; I want to be the one to finish this. Anyway, I quit my job as part of the bureaucracy, to track you down. I didn't tell anyone that I was chasing after you, but word still got out. The whole class started contacting me, insisting that they wanted to help. So I agreed. The whole class helped - it was like an assassination classroom all over again. Many of the times when the two of us barely escaped trouble were carefully planned assassinations by the rest of us. We still haven't forgotten anything Korosensei taught us. But we use it differently than you do."

Nagisa noticed that Karma carefully avoided the subject of being afraid of the little blue-haired male. Was it true? Did they all think that he would be able to kill them if he had the will to do so? _You might kill them, if you were asked to,_ said an unhelpful little voice in Nagisa's head.

"But this is all trivial, Nagisa," Karma continued. "Honestly, you must be the only one who could make us open up and talk so much at a time like this. Bottom line is, the rest of E-class and I don't agree with you and your methods. We all feel somewhat responsible for how this turned out, so we felt that we must take it upon ourselves to end this."

Nagisa took this all in. _The whole class had plotted this assassin against him._ For some reason, this thought made him smile. Nagisa leaned his head back onto Karma's legs, as he spoke his last words.

"I guess I've become the Korosensei for you guys, huh?"

Looking up, the last sight Nagisa saw was the tearful face of Karma as he gave a nod and produced the saddest smile Nagisa had ever seen. And he pulled the trigger.

 _"Thank you, Nagisa."_


End file.
